Ports of Call
by perennials
Summary: When their story inevitably spins into legend, this is the part that people will cut first, that will get half a line and barely a breath more. Tetra thinks that's a little presumptuous, because you don't just stumble on new countries overnight
1. raise anchor

Ports of Call

**PROLOGUE**

_raise anchor._

They leave and don't look back.

That sounds more dramatic than it ends up being.

The truth is, they _can't _look back. Literally, physically. They can look back metaphorically all they like; as ominous as it sounds, being "tied to the past," all it really does is slow productivity for an hour or so while her crew wallows in their own nostalgia (which mostly involves telling old stories they all know the endings to, while Niko makes paper cutouts and Link watches with big, sad eyes). Tetra is fairly sure she can man her own ship for an hour or so.

(She never tells stories.

Or comments on Niko's cutouts, even to criticize them.

Someone needs to wear the big boy pants around here, and it might as well be her.)

It's a half-new, half-old revelation. A rudimentary version of it had been hot on the heels of her first plan to leave (the one she came up with more out of desperation than practicality, when her world was literally collapsing around her in waves). When the plan crystallized into something a little more realistic, she realized that for at least the first hour – from the moment the wind plumed the sails to the second Outset got swallowed by the horizon – she couldn't look back. None of them could. They were each allowed one final goodbye glance, but once their gazes hit the open sea, that was it.

Chapter closed.

Because they made a choice that day. One she doesn't intend to back out on, no matter how weepy-eyed and sentimental her crew gets.

But the farther they get, the more she realizes that they can't look back, ever. Because once Outset vanishes it's Windfall on the horizon, and then Dragon Roost, and if they let themselves slack even for a second, then there's just a whole slew of problems she doesn't have the time or patience to deal with.

Once, when she was a girl and her mother was still alive, they'd spent a week longer on Greatfish than they'd intended. (Gonzo was the swabbie then, and he'd either been overwhelmed or distracted, no one had ever been able to figure out which. The ropes had nearly sent him overboard.) There had never been much to see on Greatfish, even before it was wrecked by Ganondorf – just a small community of artisans strewn along the disjointed pieces of the island. But back then there had been an... operation on the cliffs to the north. Anybody could sell anything to anyone, and nobody asked any questions.

For a normal person lost enough to stumble on it, it was shady at best and malicious at worst.

But for the daughter of a renowned pirate captain, spending an extra week on Greatfish was the equivalent of being handed an all-access pass to a carnival.

She spent the entire week darting around the pieces of the island, alternating between dragging her bare feet through the shallow canals of saltwater and playing a game where she'd die if she got even a drop of water on her pant leg. She hid in the shadows of rocky overhangs and tried to startle novice pirates who were stupid enough to set up actual stalls to hawk their wares. She saw all kinds of treasure from all over the world; she spent an entire day trying to haggle for a sapphire ring, and her mother had to drag her away before she remembered she had a perfectly valuable chunk of gold hanging around her neck.

The point is, Tetra loved being on Greatfish.

And then she had to leave.

Her mother warned her not to look back. She told her to keep her eyes focused on the horizon, on the next island waiting for them, on the future. But Tetra had convinced herself that if she could just get one last look at the island, then maybe leaving wouldn't be so awful. So she hung on the back railing and watched Greatfish recede until it was a little black speck in the ocean, waiting to feel better until she realized she wasn't going to.

That's why they don't look back. Why they can't look back.

They've gotten far enough now that what they used to call the "Great Sea" has become it's own speck in an even greater sea. The horizon is, literally, endless all around. And as long as they stay focused and look forward, it stays a horizon of possibilities, of a land they might be able to truly call _theirs._

But the second they look back, it's over.

Done.

The ocean might as well just swallow them whole, because they've gone too far for old stories and sentimentality to wash them back home.

So they don't.

And it ends up being not so bad.


	2. above board

**CHAPTER ONE**

_above board._

The choice in all of this is important to her, for some reason. Which doesn't make much sense; the open sea is her home, it always has been. Why should some tenuous notion of a border around the so-called "Great Sea" matter to her at all? Next to Link and his island full of adoring fans, her ties to it are literally nonexistent. But every morning she reminds herself – _This is my choice. _– and it keeps her from feeling unsteady when the unfamiliar sea breeze hits her cheek.

(She doesn't mention the unsteadiness to anyone.

Because it's minor and barely able to be called unsteadiness at all, and because it's not important.)

On the surface it doesn't seem like it, but she and Link _had_ a choice. They could have just as easily tried to shoehorn themselves back into their old lives, pretend they weren't living on top of the tattered remains of their dead kingdom.

(_A _dead kingdom. It was never theirs, it was their ancestors', and their ancestors were the ones who sucked them back into it without their permission.)

And really, it's more of an option than it seems. It would be hard at first, sure, but give somebody enough time and they can forget anything. Or at least bury it enough to go back to normal. Their old lives were decent – good, even – and there's no shame in falling back on the status quo. She distinctly recalls feeling perfectly happy being a scoundrel and thinking her necklace was just a chunk of gold lifted from some nameless collection of loot generations ago.

They could have stayed and they didn't. They chose to leave instead.

That's why, when they're three days north-northwest of the Forsaken Fortress and the air is already starting to taste a little different, Tetra is feeling somewhat... on edge. That's why, when she overhears certain-shark-bait-who-shall-not-be-named trying to cast their mission as some sort of altruistic _quest_ that's forced them to sacrifice their past on a nebulous promise of a nondescript future, she finds herself wanting to strap them _all_ to the catapult and find out how much they like to swim.

Instead she orders them to drop anchor, shouts when they ask her why, and lines them up shoulder to shoulder, their backs to the starboard rail. (Link goes, too; she can tell, because he stands against the starboard side of the King of Red Lions, his back straight and his eyes skyward. He's always been a little slow on the uptake for a legendary hero, but she can't correct him without compromising her authority, so she doesn't.)

She crosses her arms, paces a little, lets them stew. Then she takes a deep breath and speaks from the bottom of her stomach, the way that helps the words catch on the wind and carry enough so that they can hear her through their thick skulls.

"Listen up! It sounds to me like some of you geniuses don't understand what's happening here, so I'm going to spell it out nice and simple." She lifts her chin and takes a moment to stare each one of them in the eye. "We are not going back to the Great Sea. Ever. Not 'in-a-few-weeks' ever. Not 'maybe-after-a-year-or-two' ever. _Ever_."

She waits half a second, and all at once their mouths flap open.

"Hang on, Miss Tetra –"

"– but we were never going –"

"– I just really gotta go to the head, Princess Zelda."

"Hey!" It comes out like a bark, and they snap back together, silent and staring at a point past her shoulder. "Shut up! All of you! I'm talking."

She turns her back on them and stares hard at the opposite horizon. She needs the moment to deal with the last shreds of frustration in her gut, because this is her crew, but only within the confines of the Great Sea. Beyond that, they have the right to choose which ship they want to board, and she thinks that maybe she didn't give them that when they first shoved off from Outset.

"This isn't a game. We're leaving and we're not coming back. Do you understand?" She turns back to them, moves up and down the line, and this time they wait for her to finish. "There is no treasure. I can't say if there's even anything in it for you. We don't know what's out there or how long it's going to take us to find it, so if you think you might want to come back to this place one day, _ever_, now's the time to fess up."

She stops in the center with her arms behind her back, and lets the pause hang while she searches their faces for reactions. Mostly shock, some apprehension (Niko looks nearly white), with little threads of determination here and there. Those threads buoy her, make her feel confident of an outcome in her favor, even though she knows she shouldn't be leaning one way or the other.

She has a series of back-up plans. She and Link could handle themselves alone if they needed to. But she'd rather not need to.

"We'll turn around and drop you off in Windfall." She lets her voice lift at the end, just enough so it sounds more like an offer than a threat. "No questions, no judgments. But after this, right now? There's no turning back. So." She spreads her hands. "Anyone?"

They look at each other. They shuffle in place and lean around each other to peer down the row. But none of them speak, and eventually they all turn back toward her, grim-faced and firm.

Tetra feels... _something _swoop in her stomach. Not relief, because she's better than that, but still something warm and fuzzy and not at all suited to the circumstances. She breathes it all out, one slow exhale, and shrugs. "Well, all right then. I gave you your chance."

She waves one hand lazily and they scatter around her like cracking glass –

"You heard the young Miss!"

"All hands on deck!"

"And really _shout _if you see something out there, yeah? So we can all hear ya!"

– hauling up the anchor and opening the sails until they're right back on track, hurtling toward the horizon. Link smiles his big dopey smile up at her, and she pretends not to notice.

Obviously, putting her foot down doesn't do anything to stop all the melodramatic posturing. Niko still occasionally sprawls on the quarter deck and makes Link swab around him while he bemoans their elusive, nameless new country. But they at least know they've made their choice, and that's enough for her to look past it occasionally.

(Provided it doesn't interfere with their schedule and/or give her a headache.)

III

The way it works is this: they give Link a bit of a head start, and he scouts the waters ahead while they bring up the rear. The King of Red Lions and its one puny sail isn't enough for it to outstrip her full-masted ship; but it's smaller, easier to maneuver, and they don't have a clue what's out beyond the Great Sea and its population of monsters. If anyone is adept enough to deal with whatever "what's out there" may be, it's Link.

They didn't exactly plan it – those were just the roles they fell into once they left familiar water. Link never asked to board her pirate ship instead, and she never offered.

The King of Red Lions is just a boat now. Stiff and wooden and empty. But it's still _Link's _boat, and as a fellow seafarer, Tetra respects that.

When night falls, they drop anchor. It's a precaution she doesn't particularly like – it makes her feel like a child, still spooked by darkness – but they're in unfamiliar waters without a map, and the last thing they need is to be caught off guard when visibility is low. So each night they drop anchor, lift Link onto the deck, lash the King of Red Lions to the side, and continue the journey at first light.

The long nights of idleness make her antsy. On previous nights she'd ordered the crew to check and recheck the equipment. Then she'd checked and rechecked the equipment herself. That night she goes to monitor their supplies as a change of pace, but the boxes are nearly twice her height and stacked to the ceiling. It was better to be overprepared than mostly prepared, obviously, but now it just annoys her, because she doesn't want to go above and check the ropes for the five hundred millionth time.

She sticks her head into the galley, barks "Nudge!" and hovers in the doorway until he stops whatever he's doing and follows her.

"We've gone over the supplies a hundred times over," he tells her while she marches down to the supply hold. "We have enough to last us months, Princess."

"Don't call me that," she says. "We can't check too many times."

He sighs in a way that she knows means he's humoring her. Which is ridiculous, because she's only being practical. Just for that, she makes him pull the very top box down first (rows and rows of hard tack that is guaranteed to last forever – the first of many, many boxes).

"Is something bothering you, Miss?" he asks while she counts the rows and columns and does math in her head. "It's not like you to fuss over little things."

"I'm not fussing, and this isn't little." Tetra points to the next box in the top row. "Put this one back and bring me that one."

"We did inventory last week. You handled it personally, Miss."

(It's annoying that he can still talk while lifting a box that she'd fit inside three times over.)

"Get the next one while you're at it."

He sighs again, that same one, but does as he's told and doesn't prod her any further. They go through the entire top row, one by one, all duplicate crates of the same hard tack. Except for the last one. It's slightly smaller than the others, thinner and squatter, and tucked precariously on the edge of the column in the corner. Nudge pries the lid open and makes an "Oh," sound halfway between pleasant surprise and minor inconvenience.

A splash of panic goes through her anyway, her brain hitting every disastrous possibility there could be in a crate that isn't full of weeks worth of hard tack when it should be. She pushes Nudge out of the way and goes on tiptoe to peer into the box. She expects it to be empty, infested with weevils, filled with something useless like windchimes, but doesn't expect it to be...

Vegetables.

Specifically, potatoes and a collection of green things that look mostly rotted. They're stacked haphazardly and mixed together, like they were thrown in on a whim, and only fill the box to barely the halfway mark. "What _is _this?" she remarks, turning a potato over in her hands. Perishable food like this shouldn't have made it within one hundred feet of her ship, much less last this long into an exploratory journey.

"It must be leftovers," Nudge says, poking at the twisted leaves of the green-somethings. "From Windfall."

They'd docked briefly at Windfall when they'd passed by, to refill the supply hold before they officially crossed into the outer rim of the Great Sea. The people had taken one look at Link and shoved an entire crate of "local delicacies" to "help them get by." All things like the vegetables in this box – a nice gesture, but not at all suited for the journey they had set out on.

Nudge lifts one of the potatoes out of the box and squints at it. "About to go bad," he tells her.

Tetra pats the lip of the crate and falls back on her heels. "Well, looks like we found dinner," she says. "Get on it."

"Aye, Miss."

She turns on her heel and goes above to check the ropes one last time.

III

It's always an event when they have legitimate cooked meals on the ship. Niko does a dance when she tells him, and Senza runs immediately to the galley to watch it all happen. Given a few hours, Nudge can turn anything into a halfway decent stew, which becomes the equivalent of food heaven when you've been running on hard, stale biscuits for weeks and weeks.

There's not even five minutes between the moment Nudge announces the stew is finished and the moment he flips the first serving of it into a bowl. Bits of potato and broth scatter across the floor, blending in with the swollen wood and shadows and miscellaneous pieces of whatever it is that ends up down there. The bowl swings around the table towards her, changing hands with a speed and lack of attention that comes from years and years of practice, and Tetra squints at it. She measures maybe half a tablespoon of stew sloshing out before it reaches her – the boys clearly more focused on their shouting match than on making sure their captain's dinner ends up in her belly rather than on the floor.

Still, it's more than usually makes it to her.

The bowl _plonks _down onto the table, and Tetra leans her chin in her hand while Nudge passes around the next round and Gonzo's voice starts to strain from sheer volume. From here, the order of who gets which bowl when starts to matter a whole lot less – as long as she gets the first serving, the rest is a free-for-all draped in a thin layer of civility.

"– better be making some kinda joke! 'Cause there's no way you'd be such a moron about somethin' so obvious!"

Nudge hands a bowl to Gonzo, who passes it to Link, who passes it to Niko, who keeps it.

"You're making yourself look worse by getting so worked up." Mako is practically giddy; the smugness of his grin keeps going up and down in waves. He's trying to rein it in with halfhearted effort, and Tetra can't entirely blame him. She didn't expect Gonzo to rise to the bait as much as he has, either. "I only made an observation."

Gonzo passes a bowl to Link, who passes it to Senza, who keeps it.

"A wrong one!" Ah – that one hit a nerve. A real, literal nerve; she can feel her ear drums vibrating a little more sharply than they're intended to. Tetra sticks her pinky in her ear, and it makes stirring the heat out of her stew that much harder. "All you have to do is take one look at me, yeah? "

Gonzo passes a bowl to Link, who passes it to Mako, who keeps it.

He moves the bowl to the side half an inch and raises a hand to his glasses, making a show of squinting and scrutinizing. "Initially, maybe. You have size, constitution, and experience all on your side." And then it creeps in again, the smug smirk of a preemptive strike. "So what is it that makes you such a lightweight?"

Gonzo passes a bowl to Link, who passes it to Zuko, who keeps it.

"Nothing!" Something shakes, and Tetra glances idly at the lantern hanging in the corner to make sure there aren't any pieces of glass to clean up. She touches her spoon to her lips and hisses at the heat. "Because I'm anything _but!_"

Gonzo passes a bowl to Link, who doesn't have anyone left to pass to and falters.

Mako shrugs. "My observations say differently. Stumbling all over yourself, picking fights with strangers, falling asleep in strange places. All after only one or two mugs!"

"I don't remember any of that!"

"No, you wouldn't, would you?"

Tetra notices what's about to happen about a second before it does.

Link (who would pass a serving of his dinner to a gyorg if one happened to be sitting at the table with them) breaks the sacred chain of the stew-ring by trying to pass the bowl _back _to Gonzo. Except he happens to try at the exact moment that Gonzo finally snaps and shoves back from the table. The bowl gets caught in the crossfire and goes spinning into the center, splattering broth and potato and tiny slivers of what might be those mostly rotten vegetables across the table.

Tetra sighs and lifts her spoon to her lips. It burns a little in the back of her throat, but in the good way. "Idiots. Now look what you've done."

At once, a chorus of "_SWABBIE!_" rings out around the table.

And nothing happens.

Gonzo seizes the back of Niko's head kerchief and presses his nose down towards the table. "That's you, swabbie! Wipe it up, yeah?"

"What? What? What?" Niko screeches and whines, his arms windmilling. Tetra slurps her stew. "No way! Link's here, Link's the swabbie!"

"Nice try! You gotta be a member of the crew to be the swabbie, swabbie!"

Tetra sets her spoon down and rubs at her eyes.

"Link's part of the crew," Zuko says, barely looking up between bites.

"No, I think I may actually agree with Gonzo," Mako says. "Link is more an ally than an actual member of the crew..."

"Yeah, yeah." Gonzo smacks Link on the back, and the poor kid actually pitches forward from the force of it. "Not that we don't like having the kid here. Right, kid?"

Link winces and does something with his head that looks like it could be a nod, but Tetra can't imagine he cares very much either way. He understands the notion of a support network, obviously, but she doesn't think the notion of a rigid "crew" ever really clicked beyond the standard definition. But when you do things like unearth old kingdoms and slay evil sorcerers without much in way of help, she supposes it never really needed to.

Niko makes a sound like a pampered family dog going half an hour without attention.

"Link's part of the crew," Zuko says again, "Miss Tetra says so."

She feels the entire table turn toward her for confirmation, and Tetra can't help but groan a little. She opens one eye and drags her spoon along the surface of her stew. "What? You want my opinion now?"

"Well, just, it's an important distinction, Miss."

"The rankings and all that..."

"And somebody still needs to wipe up the table..."

Tetra pulls the spare rag from her belt; it's messy and old and mainly used for wiping sweat and sea spray off the railings; but it's also symbolic, and it isn't as if this table has ever been clean before. She holds it up so they all get a good look, then tosses it into Link's lap. He grimaces and lifts it with one hand, but then he stands obediently and leans across the center of the table to mop up the by-now-probably-halfway-solid stew.

Niko cheers.

"Link's as much a member of this crew as any of you scum-for-brains," she says. "Understand?"

"But he doesn't even ride on the ship with us, Princess," Mako says. Tetra glares, and he wilts. "It's just not exactly conventional..."

"I'll decide what's conventional on my ship," she snaps. "Now shut up and let me eat already."

"Hey, hey, if the shrimp's a pirate now, he's gotta be initiated," Senza says, and murmurs of agreement ripple around. (Plus one uncertain "Yeah, yeah," from Niko, who looks a little green at the suggestion, with good reason. That one hadn't been pretty.) Link sprawls across the table to reach a drop of broth that had flung into the opposite corner, and Senza flips the back of his cap over his head. "What do you think of that, kid?"

"Oh, wait, the kid's still a kid, isn't he?" Gonzo glances sidelong at the others and lowers his voice, like that will keep Link from hearing him. "Are we sure we can give him that?"

"Why?" Mako asks. "Afraid he'll drink you under the table?"

(Tetra's a little disappointed that he went for prodding the same button, but what can you do.)

Gonzo starts to snap back, but Nudge steps in for the entire table and talks over him. "The kid's a kid, but he's also a man. If you ask me, he's earned it."

"Aye, aye."

"Don't believe he didn't need any while he was doing the saving, anyway."

Link tucks her rag into his belt and settles back in his chair. He opens his mouth to speak, but no one looks to him for input, and Tetra finds it hilarious that he thinks he had any in the first place.

"But a little shrimp like him? Won't it mess him up bad?"

"Won't know if we don't try. Har!"

He looks at her with big eyes, but Tetra scrapes up the last bit of stew from her bowl right at that moment. She grins around her spoon, salutes, and leaves him to it.

III

The downside to officially pulling Link into the fold is that she knows he'll slowly phase out of "kid" and "shrimp" and become universally known as "swabbie." He's the newest member, so he lands on the bottom rung and the entire crew is allowed to have him do whatever they wish. (Not even she can change those rules; the station of swabbie has existed for generations, and nobody's above tradition on that particular ladder.) Which is fine, but whenever they get a new swabbie the power always rushes to their heads for a few days.

She finds him later under the deck, halfway swallowed by the monster of a pot Nudge uses to cook the stew. She stands in the doorway for a moment, watching him furiously scrub away, and thinks that that's probably going to be the cleanest that pot ever was or ever will be.

"'Hoy, Link." She thinks she sees his shoulders scrunch a little, but he isn't as easy to startle as he used to be. He twists his way out of the pot, and smiles wide when he sees her. "You don't have to do that anymore. That thing was probably clean up to our standards ages ago."

He glances at the lip of the pot, where a bit of meat has crusted over from the one time they were able to get it, ages ago. His face pinches a little around the eyes.

"Get used to it." She hoists herself up on the table and smirks down at him. "This is a pirate ship, not the debutante ball." She barely catches him rolling his eyes before he swipes at the crusty bit with his mashed up ball of steel wool and ducks back into the pot. "Hey! I'm serious, you know. You're just making more work for yourself."

He waves her off. Or, at least, that's what she thinks he's doing, until he keeps waving and she realizes there's a messy red scrap of something in his hand – her rag.

"Oh." She catches one edge and jerks it out of his hand. She turns it over to inspect it, and, really, it's a shame that they had to spill the stew like that. She's going to have to wash it now. "Sorry about that, by the way," she tells Link's back.

He bobs a little and says, "I don't mind," though the only reason she's able to hear it is because it echoes in the back of the pot. If it were a little bit shallower or if he were a little bit taller, it would've been swallowed up.

"No, of course you don't mind," she says, and tucks the rag back into her belt. "Which is why everything on my ship is practically sparkling. You really don't get how pirates work, do you?"

He pulls himself out of the pot, breathing in deep like he just surfaced from a dive, and tips it over to drain soapy water out of the bottom. Then he starts picking at the steel wool in his palm, trying to spread it out of the tightly-wound ball he'd managed to press it into, with a kind of attention to detail that's just bizarre.

She's always known him to be a goody-two-shoes, helping everyone who so much as sneezed with a shred of distress, but never with cleaning their toilets and never with as much dedication as he seems to be showing the appliances on her ship. What happened to priorities? Wasn't there something, anything, more important for–

Oh.

No, probably not. Not with the ship anchored and the sea flat and silent, anyway.

The alternative would be to relax, and she knows for a fact he's been incapable of that ever since Ganondorf's bird descended on Outset.

Link flips the pot back over and ducks to scrub at the inside edges some more, but Tetra catches the back of his shirt before his head is halfway in. "Alright, that's enough of that. You scrub any more, and people aren't going to know that this ship is something to be feared. We're pirates, you hear me? _Pirates._"

He makes a half-choking, half-growling sound, but she swings her arm around his shoulders before he can twist away from her and steers him back towards the door. "I have something more important for you to do anyway," she assures him.

III

It's important to know that the equipment on her ship is always in tip-top condition.

One frayed line, one unsteady spar – it could easily unravel into a full-blown disaster. Tetra won't have the lives of her crew and the sanctity of her mission put in jeopardy by a cursory equipment check. She trusts her crew and their judgment ninety-nine percent of the time, but something about the unfamiliar waters makes her unsteady.

(Not that it's important.)

They still do their daily checks, they still report everything and anything they find, and their work is still exemplary.

But each night after they eat, Link disappears for an hour or two – checking and rechecking and checking again.

Because she thinks that the thing tugging at her, the thing behind the unsteadiness-that-isn't, is probably tugging at him too.


	3. in the offing

**CHAPTER TWO**

_in the offing._

Her mother died of illness, after nearly two months of running the ship from her bed below deck. Tetra had been ten, maybe eleven. Time in those days was blurry; she remembers sitting and tending to her mother, bringing her soup and hot water bottles and slices of lime when she asked for them. She doesn't remember seeing the sun, or the moon, or the sky at all for that matter.

She'd been half asleep when it happened, sitting in a chair beside her mother's bed, their hands loosely linked. Her mother must have said something right before, like "Take care of the ship," or "Guard your necklace with your life," or "I love you." But she couldn't have possibly said _all_ those things, and Tetra remembers all of them. She can't say for certain if she really heard anything at all, or if they're just the false memories of a grief-stricken child.

(She's young, but she hasn't been a child for years.)

The only moment that she knows is a real memory, stark against the faded edges of the others, is the moment right after, when Nudge took her shoulders and gently shook her awake.

"Young Miss," he'd said into her ear, "Young Miss, you have to come away from the bed now."

She remembers being sleepy and warm, and pushing his hands away without understanding his tone. She remembers him trying to lift her bodily from the chair, and how she opened her eyes, saw her mother there, white and limp, and just _knew_. She remembers kicking and screaming and giving Senza a black eye before they were finally able to pull her from the room.

She remembers hiding in her quarters under the woolen blanket she'd had since she was a baby and thinking, _This isn't what a captain would do._

So she'd wiped her nose and used some of the white powder she'd stolen from her mother (months before she'd even taken ill) to cover up the blotchiness of her face. Her knees had been shaky, she remembers, like the fist time setting foot on land after months at sea. But she'd forced herself to stand in her doorway, and watch the crew (_her _crew) carry something draped in a white sheet down to one of the lower holds.

When they came back up, she folded her hands behind her back and lifted her chin like she'd watched her mother do.

"Miss Tetra," one of them said (it could have been Senza or Gonzo, she isn't sure which), "You really should be resting, Miss..."

"This is my ship," she remembers herself saying, too loud and too unsure for any pirate captain. "Will you be my crew?"

In retrospect, it was probably the worst decision they ever made, trusting a little girl with red-rimmed eyes to manage a code and a ship and each and every one of their lives.

But they've never looked back.

III

They're a month into their trip before anything remotely interesting happens.

She loves the sea, no question. There's something about endless blue waves rolling over the horizon that's comforting to her, that feels like home in a very abstract way. But even things you love can get old when they go on and on and on and on and on. Out loud she'd say that she prefers the boredom to stress, but in her head she still hasn't quite made up her mind.

In any case, something happens.

It's Gonzo's shift at the helm, and she's standing beside him, monitoring their progress. Distantly she can hear Zuko shouting something, but the wind is too loud and his voice is too faint – she gave up trying to make it out ages ago, but Gonzo is still waving his fist at the crow's nest.

"Oi! What's even the point of having a lookout that can't yell properly, huh? _Shout_, Zuko!"

Tetra rubs her temples. "Give it a rest, will you? We go through this every single time."

"I'm just saying, Miss," Gonzo mutters, easing the wheel into the wind. "He could use some vocal training or something, yeah?"

"It's cheaper to just climb up and ask," she says, and starts off towards the ladder of the crow's nest. "Don't run us into rocks."

"Tell him what I said!" Gonzo shouts after her, "He'll shape up if he hears it coming from you, Miss!"

She waves one hand at him and starts up the ladder. The wind laps lazily at her vest and kerchief, and if she looks up she can see Zuko peering down at her, the telescope tucked under his arm. He steps back when she gets closer to the top, to give her room to swing herself up.

"'Hoy, Miss."

"I know you can do better than that," she tells him, "Is there some kind of bet I don't know about? See who can get Gonzo riled up the most? Because it's giving me a headache."

Zuko shrugs. "It's still a few miles off," he says, "But I figured I should save my voice..."

"What's a few miles off?"

He swings the telescope to his eye and does a quick scan of the horizon before pointing somewhere south-southwest. She squints, but she doesn't need a telescope to see how the sky goes dark and roiling just over the line of the sea. It's a storm, and a nasty one from the looks of it.

"It's fast moving," Zuko says. "It'll overtake us... in a few hours."

Tetra holds her hand out, and he puts the telescope in her palm. Looking closer, it's just a typical ocean squall, if a little heavier than average. It'll be a pain, and they'll have to take down the sails, but it's not anything to get overly worked up about. She hands the telescope back, satisfied, and starts back down the ladder. "I'll let the rest of them know," she says, before she gets too far. "Monitor it, and let me know if anything changes."

"Aye, Miss."

Nothing changes. The storm hits them as expected just a few hours later, and while she underestimated the wind speed a little, her plans don't change. It's small enough that they can simply ride it out; they can do their best to minimize dragging, but in the end it won't be able to do that much damage to their course.

The clouds roll over them first, dark and heavy, and then the rain starts coming down in sheets. The wind whips the drops around, and eventually it starts to feel like the gods are hurling dull pins at them as a practical joke. The wind howls past her ears, flapping through the sails and tossing sea spray high, and she can barely hear her own pealed orders from inside her head. But the truth is, it's a pretty standard storm, not anything they haven't had to deal with before, and her crew manages to grasp her meaning.

They're preparing the ship, pulling ropes and closing sails, when Zuko _bellows. _A real, lookout's bellow, one that cuts through the wind and rain like a dart and stops them all dead.

"Flag! Flag! The King of Red Lions is raising its red!"

Tetra gave Link four flags on Outset, as a means to communicate with her ship while they were at sea.

White, if he needs assistance.

Yellow, if he encounters something but doesn't engage it (like treasure hunters or harmless sea creatures or even fisherman, if there were any to be found.)

Orange, if he engages something and takes care of it on his own, to put them on alert.

And red, if he engages something but can't get rid of it, to let them know it's probably headed their way.

Up until now, he hasn't needed to use any of them.

Tetra whirls on the spot as soon as the last syllable hits her ears. "Nudge, Gonzo, Senza! You have your orders, stick to them! Keep us steady! Mako, Niko, ready the cannons! I'll be behind you. _Go!_"

They scatter, and Tetra hauls herself halfway up the ladder of the crow's nest. The wind tears her hair out of its knot and the strands soak through in a matter of seconds, so that they end up like small, icy whips against her forehead. The rungs of the ladder are slimy from rain and mold, and they're slick against her palm, but she knows she won't be able to focus unless she clarifies one last thing. She shields her face against the rain and shouts so that Zuko can hear her, enough to rub her throat raw.

"_'Hoy! _What's Link's position?"

She's too far down, can't even see Zuko over the lip of the crow's nest, but she hears his response as crisply as if he were swinging on the ladder just below her. "The ship has gone bare-poles just off the starboard side!"

She pulls her hair away from her eyes and holds it in a fist while she scans that section of the ocean. A wave swells in the distance, and she spots the smear of red and green that is Link and his little boat. "Good! Keep an eye on him, make sure we don't lose him!"

"Aye, aye, Miss!"

It's a weight off her shoulders. She'd trust Zuko and his eyes if they were in the middle of a hurricane, and so she slides back down the ladder, this time using the sliminess of it to her advantage.

But her foot hasn't even touched the deck before Zuko shouts again. "Starboard! Monster to starboard!"

Distantly she can hear Niko screeching over the rain, "Monster to starboard! Monster to starboard!" and then there's the shuddering _crack! _of the starboard cannons.

Tetra drops herself down and bends her knees to absorb the extra tilt from the cannon's recoil, but she doesn't anticipate the rumbling heave that goes through the ship. It's too heavy, too violent, not even comparable to the force of their tiny guns. The hull groans and the deck goes nearly vertical; waves crash up over the port railing, splattering pools of icy rain and seawater across the boards. She curses wildly as her feet slide out from under her, swings a fist, and manages to hook one arm through the rungs of the ladder. It takes her a second to regain her balance, and the muscles in her bicep burn from the effort of keeping herself upright.

"What was that?" she shouts at no one in particular, "Did anyone see?"

"Couldn't tell you, Miss!" Senza leans heavily against the wheel in what is a desperate and vain attempt to keep the ship from overcompensating from the force of the blow. "Never seen anything like it before in my life...!"

"Didn't see a thing!" Gonzo shouts from somewhere behind her, "Can't see anything in this damn rain!"

The ship rocks, evens out, and eventually she finds her balance again. A wave drops off abruptly, and she steadies herself as the ship slams into the trough, sending another spray of seawater across the deck. It's deep enough that it provides a moment of (relative) stillness, and Tetra takes the opportunity to sprint to the opposite end of the ship and duck through the door to the lower holds.

The choppiness of the water is even more pronounced below deck – she can feel every crash of waves against the hull, can feel the ship rock and sway through the storm, and it's only a lifetime of practice that lets her descend the stairs without having to stop every few steps. It's dark and damp, and the hull creaks under the pressure of the water as it dips and rises. For right now it's just ambient noise – the sounds any ship makes when caught in high surf – but she can sense a strain in it, feel her ship trying to recover.

Whatever this monster is, it certainly isn't small, and she knows for a fact that too many more blows like the first and they'll be taking on water.

She throws the door of the lower hold open, where they've been keeping their supply of cannons since they filched them from Windfall almost a year ago. There are wide pools collecting in imperfections in the floor, and the wood around the portholes is frayed and splintered from the hit. The cannons are still, mercifully, intact, if scattered in a haphazard line through the hold, and Tetra forces herself to focus her attention on that and that alone.

"Niko, Mako!" They're hauling the second cannon away from the porthole to load; neither of them look up, but they both acknowledge. ("Aye, Miss!") Through the portholes, she can see something shadowy looming in the water just beyond the curve of the hull. The first shot must have missed. "Status!"

"It's some kind of beast, Miss," Mako tells her, while Niko drags a crate of ammo from the back of the hold. "We can't get a good look at it through the storm, but it's big, and certainly not from the Great Sea."

"Figures. Our first sign of life and it wants us for dinner." Mako gives her a grim, thin-lipped smile, and goes to ram powder into the front of the cannon while Niko drags a second round across the boards. Neither of them are particularly known for their strength, and on the handful of occasions they've actually used these cannons it's always been Nudge and Gonzo taking point. They're moving too slowly.

She jerks the rammer from Mako's hand and does it herself, pounding the second load of gunpowder into the chamber. "Help him!" she barks, and the two of them swing the ball up just as she finishes readying the barrel.

Out of the corner of her eye she can see the shadow dart forward and back. They line up behind the gun, shove it back to the porthole, she breathes in to give the order to fire...

… and the shadow lunges, just as lightning flashes against the horizon. Tetra sees a snatch of dark, scaly flesh and one yellow eye before the ship rocks and she's lifted off her feet. Her back hits the opposite wall, and even though the wood is swollen and soft it still rakes against her skin and knocks the wind out of her. The hull groans, stretched to its limit, and water floods into the hold, swirling and dark and icy. It's not enough to warrant bailing, but it's more than enough to burn her eyes and nose and completely ruin the gunpowder in their shot.

"We're too slow!" she snarls, dragging herself to her feet and watching the beast-turned-shadow circle back around. "Niko! We need all hands down here! It won't matter how far the storm drags us if this thing capsizes us!"

"A-Aye! Aye, Miss!" He trips over a dislodged board and skids in a puddle of water, but sprints through the stumble and disappears up the stairs. Tetra grabs for two more packets of powder while Mako hauls the third and last cannon in the line to the back of the hold to load. She hefts the rammer and pounds the powder back; she blinks hard through salt and seawater, the muscles in her arms pulling painfully and her lungs laboring against the heavy air and the bruising she's sure is blooming all across her back.

They haven't had a struggle like this in the history of her captainship. As dangerous as the Great Sea can be sometimes, the monsters were always puny compared to the girth of her ship – they could do real damage if left alone, obviously, but with her resources they were never that difficult to take care of. This just isn't the same; she can feel her head going somewhere different, she can't help herself. She's not on her ship, she's on a tower. She's not on the ocean, she's beneath it, and she'll die if something doesn't give.

The rammer flies out of her hands, the uneven wood burning her palms, and suddenly Gonzo is beside her, moving her away from the gun with what can only be called a shove. "All due respect, Miss!" he shouts, and has the barrel ready within a matter of seconds.

She and Mako back away as Nudge and Senza bang through the door and descend on the gun, lifting ammo and shoving it forward. Tetra sprints to the porthole – they have the time to aim now, something they'd had to sacrifice every other time, and she's going to make the shot count. The monster is close enough now that if she squints she can see faint details through the rain. Thick, bony fins, a stiff under bite lined with huge triangles of teeth, and wide eyes set far back on the sides of its skull.

The shadow shudders and dips... and then it rears, already set to ram again. But the wind is tearing at them, they haven't completely recovered from the previous one, another hit like that will capsize them for sure, and –

Something happens. She can't tell what right away, but suddenly the monster jerks and screeches, high-pitched and wailing. It's not a battle cry – it's warped, and the monster thrashes in the water like a fish that's been dumped on shore. It's in pain, Tetra realizes; there's pus and blood curdling in the waves around it, and as it tosses its head against the surface of the water she can see something thin and fletched protruding from the soft flesh of its eye.

An arrow.

Tetra whips around, clawing at the wet strands of hair crowding her eyes, and through the porthole she sees the King of Red Lions rounding the crest of a wave, with Link perched high at its helm. A shot like that, from that distance, in conditions like this – it's literally an impossibility, another to tack on to Link's long list of conquests. But the relief she expects doesn't come; instead a dagger of frustration shoots through her, twisting heavy in her gut. A million-in-one shot is still a million-in-one shot, no matter who's making it, which means in every other scenario the arrow goes low or high or sideways or nowhere, and her crew gets buried beneath the ocean.

As much as she appreciates the gesture, she doesn't like the odds.

But she sure as hell isn't going to shirk the opportunity.

She throws her arm out and shouts at the top of her voice: "– _FIRE!_"

Senza leaps back from the mouth of the cannon and Gonzo lets the second round fly, this time centered cleanly on its target. The fish reacts to the sound, instinctively swings its head to orient its one good eye towards the danger, but only just in time to see the ball crash somewhere between its jaw and the crown of its skull. The round tears through flesh and bone, making the air reek of brine, and while it doesn't kill the creature outright, it disables it enough not to matter. It screeches again, this time with less rage behind it and more genuine distress. It flails in place, desperately trying to rebalance in the water, but the storm kicks the waters high and the waves crash over it until it's swallowed by the sea.

The water swirls and foams pinkish-white at the spot where it goes under. The spot shrinks rapidly as the wind drags them in the opposite direction, and they all crowd the portholes to watch.

One, two, three...

The monster could be regrouping, calling a pod, changing its target to the keel instead of the hull.

Seven, eight, nine...

They've already used up one lucky break. If that didn't do it, they're done.

Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen...

When she hits twenty, Tetra realizes that she's holding her breath. She lets it all out in one, long sigh, and her crew takes that as their cue to relax. Suddenly there are hands all over, slapping her back and shaking her shoulders while they whoop and cheer, grasping arms and dispensing noogies. Tetra stands at the porthole and watches as Link lowers the flag strung up on the King of Red Lions.

"You ever seen a halfway decent-looking beastie? Nah, because they don't exist! Uglies, all of them."

"I tell ya, totally flat! I was this close to going overboard. This close!"

"Did you see how it happened? Fwoosh! Straight through the storm like it wasn't even there!"

"We're not in the clear yet," she barks. "There's still a storm, if you haven't noticed."

The celebrating stops, but there's a buoyancy to them that doesn't go away. They crowd around her, bright-eyed, soaked to the bone, and ready for their next set of orders. Tetra rakes her fingers through her hair and twists it into a messy knot at the back of her neck. "Raise the sails and drop the sea anchor. Heave to – I don't want to get dragged any further than we already have."

"Aye, aye, Miss!"

Before they can scatter again, she rolls her shoulders and holds a hand up. "'Hoy, one second." They hover, and she allows herself a grin. "Good job, all of you."

She can't stop the next round of celebrations, but truthfully she doesn't try all that hard.

III

It's hard, throwing a party when all there is to eat and drink is hard tack and stagnant water, but that doesn't stop them from trying. The storm calms as the sun dips towards the horizon and paints the sky purple, so they drop anchor early and haul Link onto the ship for the night. His outfit clings to him, soaked through half with rain and half with seawater, and he wrings his cap out onto Tetra's feet. She swats at his head, but he ducks and darts out of her reach – she doesn't have the energy to chase him, so Gonzo does it for her. ("Oi, oi! Watch where you dump your sea stink, shrimplet!")

"Senza."

He bobs his head and lopes toward her. "Miss?"

"Take Gonzo and the others and go below," she tells him, "Get the galley ready for dinner."

"Now, Miss?"

"Yes, now." She glances at him sidelong. "Did I stutter?"

"It's just a little early, is all."

She shrugs, rolls her eyes. "It'll take you all at least an hour to finish stroking your own egos before we even get a chance to eat," she says, "Might as well get it out of the way now."

"Har!" His face splits into a grin, and he waves as he wanders away. "Aye, Miss."

Senza rounds up Link, too (which is a good thing; they're making good progress integrating him into her crew, even if he isn't around all that much), but Tetra flags him down before he disappears below the deck. He hesitates, torn between her and the rest of the pirates, but they don't seem to notice him lagging, and eventually he trots toward her.

"They can handle it on their own," she tells him when he reaches her. "I need to talk to you."

He nods and hoists himself up onto the railing. He beams, pats the space beside him, and she squints up at him through the sunlight. "Sometimes I can't believe you," she says, and pulls herself up next to him. "How can you possibly have so much energy, all the time? After that?"

His nose crinkles. "I'm tired," he says, and she actually laughs out loud.

"Yeah, like you just took a few laps around the deck, maybe." She lets her hair out of its haphazard twist and tries to drag her fingers through it. It's stiff from seawater and knotted up in the back, and her nails snag not even a quarter of the way through. "Though I guess that's what that was for you. A warm-up."

He doesn't say anything, but he grimaces a little, like he's guilty. She grins at him. "Oh, please. Don't make that face. I'm just fine being a little inexperienced fighting giant monsters, thanks." She starts carefully combing through her hair, working out the knots with her fingers so it won't hurt so much later when she brushes it out. "Did you get a good look at it?"

He nods.

"Did you recognize it? Not just from the Great Sea, from anywhere?"

He shakes his head.

"Well, that's that, then." She hums a little and closes her eyes; the rhythmic feel of her fingers against her scalp helps her think. "It must just not exist where we're from. But we haven't seen anything else since we left the Forsaken Fortress. You'd think there'd be some kind of gradient..."

Link sits quietly beside her, smart enough not to interrupt her train of thought.

What bothers her is the bizarre lack of a pattern. The problem isn't so much that they found a monster after nearly a month of nothing as it is that they found a monster that big and that dangerous on a whim. Either they were extremely unlucky, or it's something else. Maybe that's average around here.

She thinks about that, and thinks about the one-in-a-million-shot that was the line between life and death today, and doesn't like it.

"Something's bothering you," Link says.

She opens one eye to peer at him. "There was a moment where I thought my ship was going to end up on the bottom of the ocean, in case you missed that part."

He shakes his head. "It's something else."

She inhales and exhales, hoping a sigh will be enough to shake him, but she has his full attention. There are lines at the corners of his eyes, his mouth is turned down a little – his determined face, the one that means she wouldn't be able to shake him if she shoved him off the railing right here and now. She groans.

"Ugh, fine." She shifts on the rail, orienting herself toward him some more, and braces her hands on her knees. "But it's your own fault for not letting me build up to it."

He smiles, amused, clearly expecting something different, and she hates herself.

"I want you on my ship. Full time. No more scouting," she tells him, and the smile drops off his face. "It's been helpful so far, but after today... It's a liability. We need you where you can help us most, and that's on the deck. We'll take the King of Red Lions up tonight, store–" Her tongue trips on a _him _and his face twists in a way that convinces her he heard it. "– it in one of the lower holds. It'll be safe there, I promise."

She watches his face for his reaction. She doesn't expect him to say anything, not after dumping that on him, but she's gotten good enough at reading him that she'd know what he was thinking even if he decided to stop talking altogether. His eyes are frantic for maybe half a second before they harden, and his grip tightens on the railing.

"I'm not asking," she tells him, her voice flat, and the resolve in his eyes goes slack. It's replaced by something a lot more somber, a lot more sorrowful. "This is my ship, and this is the way it's going to be. I trust you, believe me, and if it was just you and me out there, maybe it'd be different. But I can't bet the lives of my crew on the off chance that you'll make that shot every time. I have to do everything I can to make our chances better."

He looks away, towards where they can see the curved head of the King of Red Lions peeking over the opposite railing. She's not sure what to say at this point. She'd honestly hoped for more time to think about it; she never knew the King the way Link knew him, and as attached as she is to the memory, to the gossamer-thin familial connection, she knows her experience can't match up.

"_'HOY! _'Hoy, Miss! Is it dinnertime yet?" Gonzo pokes his head around the door to the lower holds, and blanches when he sees them sitting there against the backdrop of the sunset. "Just, uh, the boys are getting antsy, Miss. Not to interrupt or anything..."

She takes the out.

She's not proud of it.

"It's fine, Gonzo." She shoves off the railing and pulls her fingers through tangles in the ends of her hair. They catch and tug her scalp painfully. "We were done anyway. Tell them to wait five more seconds, we'll be right there."

She feels Link drop to the deck behind her, but she taps into the part of her that's hard-edged and unmovable, the part of her that's been a captain since she was ten or eleven, and doesn't look back.

Her crew makes Link the guest of honor at their tiny shindig, for his incredible shot that turned the tide of the battle. They put him at the head of the table, opposite Tetra's chair, and stack another chair on top of his old one when they decide it isn't grand enough. They even arrange three extra biscuits around the edge of his plate. The extra height makes him awkward when he reaches for the food, though, and each time he tries the table booms with laughter.

She doesn't mention her decision to the rest of them until later, when she's about to turn in for the night, because she's sure they'll fight her on it.

(They do.

But that night, the King of Red Lions is still stowed away as planned.)

* * *

><p>an: As always, I'd appreciate any feedback you guys could give! Am I going too fast? Too slow? Are you bored to tears? Should I just shut up and get back to the keyboard? Let me know!


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